Modeling the Effect of Misdiagnosis in the Co-circulation and Co-infection of Dengue and Zika Virus Disease

Abstract

Dengue and zika virus disease are flavivirus diseases that spread through bites of Aedes aegypti, a mosquito in the Aedes family. There have been emerging reports of co-infection of these two diseases in humans and Aedes aegypti, in the areas where the two diseases are prevalent. More so, the two diseases are known to manifest similar characteristic symptoms, which makes it possible for mis-diagnosis and wrong treatment. In this paper therefore, we model co-circulation and co-infection of dengue and zika virus disease in human and mosquito populations, with a system of non-linear ordinary differential equations. It is shown that the disease-free equilibrium of the model may not be globally asymptotically stable due to re-infection of infected humans and mosquitoes by the other disease. The impact of mis-diagnosis of the diseases is investigated which shows that mis-diagnosis would increase the spread of the diseases if the proportion of humans that are accurately diagnosed and treated is more than the rate of recovery of humans that are wrongly diagnosed and treated. Positive constants which give the rates at which the spread of one disease affects the spread of the other are obtained. Plots are given to visualize these important results.